Bob Smith is out at Blue Origin. Thousands of days late and billions of dollars short. It’s not obvious that his replacement will be any better, though.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The comments over there are (appropriately?) brutal.
5 thoughts on “Finally”
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I’m sure Blue Origin will manage to Limp along….
There’s something about Limp and the New Shepard, er, mold line, but it’s been done to death already and I’m sure Mr. Limp has heard every possible permutation.
Good riddance and well past time. Will the new guy perform? Lettuce hope. But if he doesn’t, one hopes Bezos will not also let him clock six years in the BO Big Chair before finally handing him his walking papers.
One of the valid criticisms I’ve seen over at Ars commentary, is that it may be too late for BO, since Smith has somehow “managed” an empire the size of SpaceX that has as yet to put anything into orbit. Changing course of a ship of 1,000 employees is one thing, 10,000 a whole ‘nuther.
Well the FAA has wrapped its investigation into the New Shepard suborbital failure from a little more than a year ago. The story says in part:
…
In March, Blue Origin announced that it had pinpointed the cause of the mishap — calling attention to the “thermo-structural failure” of the nozzle on the BE-3PM engine that powers New Shepard’s first stage.
The FAA’s newly closed investigation agrees with that finding,
“The final report cites the proximate cause of the Sept. 12, 2022 mishap as the structural failure of an engine nozzle caused by higher-than-expected engine operating temperatures,” agency officials wrote in a press release today (Sept. 27).
The report also gives Blue Origin a to-do list ahead of New Shepard’s return to flight. The company must “implement 21 corrective actions to prevent mishap reoccurrence, including redesign of engine and nozzle components to improve structural performance during operation as well as organizational changes,” FAA officials wrote in today’s release.
“Blue Origin must implement all corrective actions that impact public safety and receive a license modification from the FAA that addresses all safety and other applicable regulatory requirements prior to the next New Shepard launch,” they added…
The report goes on to mention 21 corrective actions “to prevent mishap reoccurance”, including organizational changes.
Although there have been recent staff changes, no mention was made as to the pliancy of those organizational changes.
Nor was mention made, as of yet, of any new climate change mitigation plans needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But I will continue to watch for bulletins from the Sierra Club as to whether they will authorize the issuance of a launch license.